Trailer of Louis Malle's film Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows, France 1957), featuring Jeanne Moreau and the original soundtrack by Miles Davis.This is not Electric Miles, but one of the highest points in the Music/Music for films history, and deserves a little space here too...

Miles Davis playing 'Generique' in Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'echafaud, 1957 plus an interview with the director. Sadly, one of the most perfect pieces of music ever has been used for a shitty TV ad. That's the world, folks...

It's too bad "Miles," the autobiography of Miles Davis, wasn't a compact disc. There's some good shit there but...please excuse the four-letter word. Reading this book gets you accustomed to being in their company. You would like to be able to program only half the tracks.

"Miles," though written "with" Quincy Troupe, does not lean on a ghost. It does not go begging for the mass market and it is anything but one of those "I love everybody and everybody loves me" puff jobs.

The musical passages deserve to be collected into a pamphlet for required reading in conservatories. There's material about racism in music that everybody knows but few people come out and say. The progammable half also contains some stranger than fiction information about colleagues and stars and ex-wives and girlfriends. There's enough gossip and sex, drugs and violence for one and all.

But you would expect somebody called the "Prince of Silence" to choose his words with more care. He calls it "no respect" when Ornette Colemen first "tried to play trumpet and violin. ...He couldn't play either one of those instruments. That was an insult to people like me and Diz [Gillespie]. I certainly wouldn't walk up on stage and try to play saxophone if I couldn't play." Whatever happened to the benefit of the doubt?

"Miles" is riddled with redundancy (we are told he learned phrasing from Frank Sinatra and Orson Welles at least three times), unnecessary detail ("'Freddie Freeloader' was a song named after this black guy I knew who was always seeing what he could get from you for free") and crippled prose ("my only connection with the outside world was mostly through watching television"). All of it buried under a heavy load of scatology.

Lenny Bruce taught us that there are no dirty words, just dirty minds. But the tone here is sour; sheer quantity offends. Irony, ambiguity and grace rarely enter the picture. The relationship of spoken to written words is like that of live improvisation to a recording. This reads like the first take of a master who doesn't want to bother hanging around the studio. (Word was out that he hasn't read his book and doesn't intend to).

It would be easy to criticize the editing but you can understand a collaborator not wanting to push the personality presented here too hard. People are afraid of him, he admits, "because of my reputation for bluntness and liking to be left alone."

After firing his manager, David Franklin, after the latter negotiated a seven-figure recording contract with Warner Brothers that gives the recording company publishing rights (without explaining why he himself signed it), the prince proves his mastery of revenge (which, as we have been told by Archie Bunker, is the best way to get even): "That's why you don't see my songs on my new albums: Warner Brothers would get the rights to use those tunes, not me. So until we renegotiate that point, you're going to always see someone else's tunes on my records."

Toward the end of his relationship with his wife - the actress Cicely Tyson - they had an argument and she "jumped up on my back and pulled my hair weave right out of my head." He slapped her and "before I knew it I slapped her again." He "punched out" his road manager Jim Rose "upside the head" in a dispute over money. Obviously, both deserved it.

He fired his nephew, the drummer Vincent Wilburn, because he kept "dropping the time." (Is that really essential public information?) Miles's sister and her husband both called asking that he at least wait until after a concert in Chicago, their home, so it would be less embarrassing for their son. Miles refused: "Music don't have friends like that." He admits to not being a "proper father, but that just wasn't my thing."

He used every drug from the Golden Triangle to Medellin by way of Cognac and Virginia (four packs a day). He stopped because he had a stroke and anyway it was getting boring. Which rings true. There is, thankfully, no moralizing. However, when he says that the only thing wrong with cocaine is that you can get busted for it, this is inconsistent at the very least. But he's even up-front about copping out: "I have few regrets and little guilt. Those regrets I do have I don't want to talk about."

So many people disappointed him - Bird, Duke, Blakey. This insomniac seemed to spend his time with his valet in his Central Park South apartment and Malibu beach house, brooding and stroking his ego: "Some of the critics were talking about how aloof I was, but that didn't bother me; I had been this way all my life." He and John Coltrane did not get along at first because "my silence and evil looks probably turned him off."

The author looks in the mirror and says to himself how handsome he is.

"Many people he's known don't call any more," Quincy Troupe told Vanity Fair. "I saw Max Roach and Sonny Rollins the other day. They said 'How's Miles?' They used to all be like brothers. Miles still says 'Max is my brother.' But they don't see each other."

Only music - and Gil Evans - never let him down.

About the present vs the past: "When I hear musicians today playing all those same licks we used to play so long ago, I feel sad for them. I mean, it's like going to bed with a real old person who even smells real old. Now, I'm not putting down old people because I'm getting older myself. But I got to be honest, and that's what it reminds me of. Most people my age like old, stuffy furniture. I like bold colors and long, sleek spare lines."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a professor of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago... and an authority on creativity.

The way his theory of creativity works - is that if you have what you feel is a great and novel idea... and potentially you get these ideas all the time... and maybe you also happen to dapple with art and have done some paintings recently that your friends like, and you're a good cook, etc.... this sort of 'stuff' doesn't make you creative. It makes you interesting and talented:- one who experiences the world in novel and original ways- has 'fresh' perceptions / insightful judgments- an innate ability to do something very well, etc.

What separates this type of person from someone truly Creative (with a capital C) is that a Creative person leaves a trace in the cultural matrix... does something that allows humankind to go beyond it's present power... more specifically, he or she:1. masters a domain (i.e. art, physics, law, music, etc.) and develops something 'better' within that domain that is understandable to others

"The old Italian saying applies here: Impara l'arte, e mettila da parte (learn the craft, and then set it aside). One cannot be creative without learning what others know, but then one cannot be creative without becoming dissatisfied with that knowledge and rejecting it (or some of it) for a better way."

2. that 'development' then needs approval of the experts in the field, and finally, 3. it must be included in the cultural domain to which it belongs -- a very difficult task, obviously. So, Steve Jobs is creative, Bill Gates, Edison, Picasso, Einstein, Nobel Prize winners, John Lennon, etc. whereas a 'personally creative' individual contributes nothing of permanent significance -- sad, but true.

So, yes, by this definition, "van Gogh's creativity came into being when a sufficient number of art experts felt that his paintings had something important to contribute to the domain of art... w/o such a response, van Gough would have remained what he was, a disturbed man who painted strange canvases."

It's therefore so ridiculously difficult to develop something of 'lasting significance' -- would we be better off primarily listening to music by these truly Creative people who are so unique? Or should we just stick to what we 'like'...

There was a study done that measured the happiness of people who favored trying new foods versus those who mainly ordered meals they knew they liked. The result: people that simply ordered what they knew they liked were happier with their selections, overall... but that's just a random study I remember from college -- and I don't think it applies here, because when someone tried a new meal, it wasn't from a Creative chef.

In terms of music -- I'm not sure there is an answer. However, this week I have a song (actually, part of a song) from one of the most influential musicians of our time, Miles Davis. If you listen and don't like it, all I think it means is that you haven't heard enough of his stuff -- that's about it. But, given Miles Davis is who he is - the burden is on us to figure out why it's good. I personally happen to like this song because of the way he builds the tension... the song is sort of like going up the front part of a roller coaster - the further up you go the greater the suspense, as you're waiting anxiously for something drastic to happen. Same thing with this song, only rather than there being a steep cliff to release the tension - there is a symbol hit at the apex of the tune... and they tease you a bit as well, making it sound as though you're about to reach 'the top' when you haven't just yet. Quite honestly, it's one of those songs where in order to get the full effect you kinda need to just chill on your couch and close your eyes. They build it up really slowly though -- whenever I pay close attention to the entire tune the tension they build can be quite fascinating.

DescriptionThis exhaustively researched, revised edition of Ian Carr's classic biography throws new light on Davis' life and career: from the early days in New York with Charlie Parker; to the Birth of Cool; through his drug addiction in the early 1950s and the years of extraordinary achievements (1954-1960), during which he signed with Columbia and collaborated with such unequaled talents as John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly and Cannonball Adderly. Carr also explores Davis' dark, reclusive period (1975-1980), offering firsthand accounts of his descent into addiction, as well as his dramatic return to life and music. Carr has talked with the people who knew Miles and his music best including Bill Evans, Joe Zawinul, Keith Jarrett, and Jack DeJohnette, and has conducted interviews with Ron Carter, Max Roach, John Scofield and others.

About the Author

Ian Carr was born in Scotland and educated at Kings College, Newcastle. He is a professional musician who has done regular jazz broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 and has written for the BBC Music Magazine. He is the author of Music Outside (1973) and Keith Jarrett, the Man and his Music (1991).

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Miles Ahead...

Electric Miles (1968 to 1975)

Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II to the 1990s

Davis's influences included late 1960s acid rock and funk artists such as Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown and Jimi Hendrix, many of whom he met through Betty Mabry, a young model and songwriter Miles married in 1968 and divorced a year later. The musical transition required that Davis and his band adapt to electric instruments in both live performances and the studio.

By the time In a Silent Way had been recorded in February 1969, Davis had augmented his standard quintet with additional players. Hancock and Joe Zawinul were brought in to assist Corea on electric keyboards, and guitarist John McLaughlin made the first of his many appearances. By this point, Shorter was also doubling on soprano saxophone. After recording this album, Williams left to form his group Lifetime and was replaced by Jack DeJohnette.

Six months later, an even larger group of musicians, including Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira and Bennie Maupin recorded the double LP Bitches Brew, which became a huge seller, hitting gold record status (half a million copies) by 1976. This album and In a Silent Way were among the first fusions of jazz and rock that were commercially successful, building on the groundwork laid by Charles Lloyd, Larry Coryell, and many others who pioneered a genre that would become known simply as "Jazz-rock fusion".

During this period, Davis toured with the "lost quintet" of Shorter, Corea, Holland and DeJohnette. The group's repertoire included material from Bitches Brew, In a Silent Way, the 1960s quintet albums, and an occasional standard.In 1972, Davis was introduced to the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen by young arranger and cellist, and later Grammy award winner, Paul Buckmaster, leading to a period of new creative exploration for Davis. Biographer J.K.Chambers wrote that "The effect of Davis's study of Stockhausen could not be repressed for long. ... Davis's own 'space music,' shows Stockhausen's influence compositionally." His recordings and performances during this period were described as "space music" by fans, by music critic Leonard Feather, and by Buckmaster who stated: "a lot of mood changes - heavy, dark, intense - definitely space music."

Both Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way feature "extended" (more than 20 minutes each) compositions that were never actually "played straight through" by the musicians in the studio. Instead, Davis and producer Teo Macero selected musical motifs of various lengths from recorded extended improvisations and edited them together into a musical whole which only exists in the recorded version. Bitches Brew made use of such electronic effects as multi-tracking, tape loops and other editing techniques. Both records, especially Bitches Brew, proved to be huge sellers.

Starting with Bitches Brew, Davis' albums began to often feature cover art much more in line with psychedelic art or black power movements than that of his earlier albums. He took significant cuts in his usual performing fees in order to open for rock groups like the Steve Miller Band, the Grateful Dead and Santana. Several live albums were recorded during the early 1970s at such performances: Live at the Fillmore East, March 7, 1970: It's About That Time (March 1970), Black Beauty (April 1970) and Miles Davis at Fillmore: Live at the Fillmore East (June 1970).

By the time of Live-Evil in December 1970, Davis' ensemble had transformed into a much more funk-oriented group. Davis began experimenting with wah-wah effects on his horn. The ensemble with Gary Bartz, Keith Jarrett and Michael Henderson, often referred to as the "Cellar Door band" (the live portions of Live-Evil were recorded at a club by that name), never recorded in the studio, but is documented in the six CD Box Set The Cellar Door Sessions, which was recorded over four nights in December 1970.

In 1970, Davis contributed extensively to the soundtrack of a documentary about the African-American boxer Jack Johnson. Himself a devotee of boxing, Davis drew parallels between Johnson, whose career had been defined by the fruitless search for a Great White Hope to dethrone him, and Davis' own career, in which he felt the establishment had prevented him from receiving the acclaim and rewards that were due him. The resulting album, 1971's Jack Johnson, contained two long pieces that utilized musicians (some of whom were not credited on the record) including guitarists John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock, Herbie Hancock on a broken Farfisa organ and drummer Billy Cobham.

As Davis stated in his autobiography, he wanted to make music for the young African-American audience. On The Corner (1972) blended funk elements with the traditional jazz styles he had played his entire career. The album was highlighted by the appearance of saxophonist Carlos Garnett. The record provoked fierce disparagement from many critics, with one British critic noting: "I love Miles, but this is where I get off." In his autobiography, Davis stated that this criticism was made because no critic could categorize this music and complained that the album was promoted by the "traditional" jazz radio stations.

After recording On the Corner, Davis put together a new band, with only Michael Henderson, Carlos Garnett and percussionist Mtume returning from the previous band. It included guitarist Reggie Lucas, tabla player Badal Roy, sitarist Khalil Balakrishna and drummer Al Foster. It was unusual in that none of the sidemen were major jazz instrumentalists; as a result, the music emphasized rhythmic density and shifting textures instead of individual solos. This group, which recorded in the Philharmonic Hall for the album In Concert (1972), was unsatisfactory to Davis. Through the first half of 1973, he dropped the tabla and sitar, took over keyboard duties, and added guitarist Pete Cosey.

The Davis/Cosey/Lucas/Henderson/Mtume/Foster ensemble would remain virtually intact over the next two years. Initially, Dave Liebman played saxophones and flute with the band. In 1974, he was replaced by Sonny Fortune.Big Fun (1974) was a double album containing four long jams, recorded between 1969 and 1972. Similarly, Get Up With It (1974) collected recordings from the previous five years. Get Up With It included "He Loved Him Madly", a tribute to Duke Ellington, as well as one of Davis' most lauded pieces from this era, "Calypso Frelimo". This was his last studio album of the 1970s.

In 1974 and 1975, Columbia recorded three double-LP live Davis albums: Dark Magus, Agharta and Pangaea. Dark Magus is a 1974 New York concert; the latter two are recordings of consecutive concerts from the same February 1975 day in Osaka, Japan. At the time, only Agharta was available in the US; Pangaea and Dark Magus were initially released only by CBS/Sony Japan. All three feature at least two electric guitarists (Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey, deploying an array of post-Hendrix electronic distortion devices; Dominique Gaumont is a third guitarist on Dark Magus), electric bass, drums, reeds, and Davis on electric trumpet and organ. These albums were the last he was to record for five years.

Davis was troubled by osteoarthritis (which led to a hip replacement operation in 1976, the first of several), sickle-cell anemia, depression, bursitis, ulcers and a renewed dependence on alcohol and drugs (primarily cocaine), and his performances were routinely panned throughout late 1974 and early 1975. By the time the group reached Japan in February 1975, Davis was teetering on a physical breakdown and required copious amounts of vodka and narcotics to complete his engagements.After a Newport Jazz Festival performance at Avery Fisher Hall in New York on July 1, 1975, Davis withdrew almost completely from the public eye for six years. As Gil Evans said, "His organism is tired. And after all the music he's contributed for 35 years, he needs a rest."

The Albums:Miles In The Sky 1968Filles De Kilimanjaro 1968In A Silent Way 1969Jazz Greatest Hits 1969A Tribute to Jack Johnson 1970Black Beauty: Miles Davis At Fillmore West 1970Bitches Brew 1970At Fillmore: Live At The Fillmore East 1970What I Say, Vol. 1 1971Live-Evil 1971On The Corner 1972In Concert: Live At Philharmonic Hall 1973Dark Magus: Live At Carnegie Hall 1974Big Fun 1974Get Up With It 1974Agharta 1975Pangaea 1975Water Babies 1977Circle In The Round 1979Directions 1979